and carry its impressions throughout their lives. It must establish such habits of thought and conduct that all subsequent work will be aided by the discipline. This is the ideal of the elementary school. Joined with the humanities and the sciences, a study of the industries rounds out the education of the citizen and equips him to begin his vocational training. On the threshold of active life it puts him on a par with his fellows. It assures him that kind of equality which is the opportunity of every American.

CHAPTER VII

PROFESSIONAL FACTORS IN THE TRAINING OF

THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER

1

Y purpose in this chapter is to discuss what may be properly considered professional in the

MY

training of the high-school teacher, as distinguished from the academic or cultural. What constitutes professional training? What light is shed on this problem by the example of other learned professions?

Ethical relationships between mankind. - The nomic law of supply and demand determines the vocations of most men as it controls the products of their labor. In some vocations, however, another factor comes into play. The rights of others in mind, body, and estate have to be reckoned with. In most occupations these human rights are implicit; they are cared for in the common law. But in others they are guarded specifically by statute. Not everyone who has the opportunity and inclination may practice law or medicine. By the law of the State, those who are pledged to see justice done between man and man, those who by the nature of their calling are in a position to imperil the health or lives of their fellows, those upon whom the public depends for protection, or who belong to the civil service, are licensed to pursue their vocations. Putting aside those vocations which are licensed for revenue only, it

appears that

A revised reprint from the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW, March, 1913, used by courtesy of the publishers.

well-being of the many must not be sacrificed to the ambition or the cupidity of the few.

The pursuit of ethical ideals was once the chief characteristic of the learned professions. Witness the moral code contained in the Hippocratic oath which has been the gateway to the profession of medicine for two thousand years. Think of the vows taken by the candidate for the priesthood, and of the pledges exacted upon admission to the bar. The modern State but reënacts the professional decalogue when it insists upon proper evidence of moral character in licensing the lawyers, physicians, and teachers. Some day the principle will be extended to embrace all vocations which touch on the ethical relations of man and man.

Cardinal principles of professional service. The first qualification for professional service, therefore, is good character the living embodiment of moral standards, the conscious striving for high ideals. The professional worker looks to the future and is pledged by his vocation to make the future better than the present. Such an aim implies in these days the possession of two other qualifications, each potent and indispensable. One of these is specialized knowledge, and the other is skill. These three an ethical aim, specialized knowledge, and technical skill are the trinity upon which professional service rests. The stonecutter may have superior skill, but with only a modicum of specialized knowledge and lacking an ethical aim, he remains the artisan; the physician who is ignorant of his subject, however high his aim or

however skillful in practice, is still a quack; if he is learned in high degree but lacks professional skill, he is a confirmed bungler; the lawyer who is versed in all the subtilities of the law and adroit in legal procedure, but who disregards the ethics of his profession, is a charlatan, despised of men. The teacher may be a professional worker. But he who puts himself in the professional class must know accurately what he is to do, have the requisite skill for doing it, and do his work under the guidance of high ethical principles. The teacher who is ignorant of his subject is a quack; the teacher who lacks professional skill is a bungler; the teacher who is not inspired by high ideals is a charlatan.

The road the masters have trod. My idea of professional training is that it is a process of giving to novices what the masters have acquired. It is helping the beginner to get what he might get for himself under favorable conditions. There is nothing in the training of a teacher in a professional school, for example, that differs from the training of any teacher anywhere, except that the good professional school affords opportunities, equipment, and guidance that few teachers can get elsewhere. The professional school for teachers, like the professional schools of law, medicine, and engineering, is intended to help the novice travel the road that every great master has traveled, but to do it more quickly, economically, and confidently than he otherwise could.

Focusing educational effort. In my discussion of the professional training of the high-school teacher, I appeal directly to the experience of the best teachers before me and to the best in each one of my readers. What is the

had a fair field and all possible favors? How would you attain your standards of excellence in the three cardinal principles of professional service?

First, specialized knowledge. It is generally taken for granted that the college graduate knows enough to teach in a high school; in some localities graduation from a normal school, or even from a secondary school, is considered sufficient evidence of ability to do high-school work. I wish to go on record as one who believes that graduation from a college is no evidence whatever of ability to teach anything. So far as the college is a college and not a professional school, its business is not the training of the teacher or of any other professional worker. The college aims to give that general knowledge which should lie at the foundation of every kind of professional superstructure. What the profession demands is specialized knowledge, the mastery of some small field in its relations to other fields of knowledge. But knowledge specialized for the sake of professional service is not isolated information. It is rather the product of broad scholarship focused upon a particular subject.

Right here is where many excellent persons, chiefly some of our ancient classicists and modern scientists, make a grave mistake. They argue that the chief end of scholarly study is the mental discipline that it affords, or the pursuit of truth for its own sake, rather than the understanding of the subject in its cultural setting. Isolated knowledge may be useful in certain technical lines, but knowledge teeming with human interests and specialized